


Signal Change

by threewalls



Series: Schirra [17]
Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: 702 OV, F/M, First Time, Interspecies, Oral Sex, Partnership, Points of View, Teeth, Xeno, Xenophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-03
Updated: 2008-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-15 07:33:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/158516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><cite>Every other time since proves that there must have been a first, once.</cite></p>
            </blockquote>





	Signal Change

His:

The first time they have sex is not worth remembering. Three orgasms for Fran to his two, across more than an hour of love-making in every position he could think of, his performance the sum of more imagination than practice, but certainly exceptional for his age: statistics Balthier holds onto because every other time since proves that there must have been a first, once, and how could he not remember?

What he remembers is lying spent beside her, Fran's body long, soft and warm under his stroking palm. Balthier had had the strange and unfamiliar thought of wanting to just sleep beside a lover. Fran turned in his arms, and asked:

"Do you wish to know how to please viera?"

Balthier nodded, or said yes, but Fran kept looking at him in that way she does, inscrutable or expectant, and it's only a little easier to decipher her now. Her hair was pale in the crystal-light of the lamps they'd left glowing dim. He was still stroking her back.

Finally, Fran said, "no blowjobs," though he hadn't asked for any, and shrugged out of his arms, out of the sheets, and then she was showering in the hotel ensuite.

Balthier pretended to have fallen asleep.

The space beside him was still warm when she returned, brushing fingertips, not nails, over the side of his face. She suggested they meet in three days' time, the aerodrome, standard operating procedure like any other port-stay. He didn't see her again until then.

A week later, he solemnly promised not to demand blowjobs, and Fran nodded, returning her attention to the panel in the left wing that they'd opened. The Strahl had started tilting incrementally right on her axis. It seemed to be something in the main skystone of the wing, though neither he nor Fran could see any fractures when they'd taken it out and they didn't have a spare of equal size to test the hypothesis. He waited for Fran to finish soldering in the several inches of fresh wiring, and then carefully slotted in the three of their auxiliaries they hoped would compensate. At least as far as Rabanastre and Nono's expert opinion.

Once they were back in the air, on autopilot and the Strahl steady as she went, Fran had looked at him again, told him he looked troubled. Balthier outright asked if Fran had enjoyed herself; she said yes.

"Just-- no blowjobs?"

Fran pulled him across the aisle by the shirt-collar and Balthier gripped his armrest to meet her without overbalancing. He tried to return her bruising kiss with interest, but pulled away at the cut, the pain when his tongue had darted into her mouth.

Fran made a show of opening her mouth. Her teeth were huge, sharp, inhuman, and a small part of him couldn't yet believe he wanted to kiss _that_. (It might have been his stomach. It certainly wasn't his dick.)

"So, no blowjobs."

"No blowjobs."

"Is this a mutually binding stipulation, or do you define blowjobs as occurring only in their traditional locus?"

The second time they had sex, Balthier spent the first thirty minutes on his knees in front of his navigator's chair. Then, they worked backward and down through the ship.

\---

Hers:

The first time Fran lies with Balthier, he confuses her. Not his creativity, for she has found that to be a mark of his race. Nor his gentleness, for they came together with too much deliberateness for her to expect him to be rough.

"Is she with you?"

"That is entirely at the discretion of the lady herself."

Fran has heard such exchanges often in the past year, for Balthier has made it a point of policy that their association should remain ambiguous in front of witnesses. It distracts them from recalling their appearance more precisely than "young, handsome man/pirate" and "viera." She has learnt to see this as performance, the smile that Balthier will use to turn to her showing more pleasure in his own cleverness than hope of her selection. But, she takes pleasure in his cleverness, as well.

However, tonight's smile did not reach his eyes. And so, she had said, "yes," reaching under the table to clasp Balthier's hand. "He is with me."

They stood like they were one person, and added a room to their bar tab. Fran had expected him to be drunk, if they came to this again, but he wasn't. He isn't. His eyes are alert and though he does not look at her ears, he watches her face.

Balthier confuses Fran because it has been many years since she has lain with one who did not choose her company for her race, and years beyond that for one who ignored it entirely (she keeps her hands to the sheets; what else can she do?). His long-fingered hands are wonderful, but he touches her only (everywhere) between her neck and hips. Balthier kisses her frequently, not only her lips, but down the line of her jaw, her breasts and her belly, and below; how can he ignore the texture of her skin, her scent, her taste that he so willingly swallows? She expects him to be loud, to be verbose lost in his own release, but does not expect to hear her own name (he speaks it in a low murmur, the pants of his exertion, but how can he forget her ears?).

But her confusion is a tone to her pleasure, not its colour, and she enjoys him, once, twice, thrice, ankles crossed behind him and her back arched. She does need to understand how Balthier takes his pleasure to know that he does.

Afterwards, she asks him if he has any questions about her kind.

"Uh, sure. What do you like?"

The Green Word demands kind lay with kind, warder with warder, maker with maker, sister with sister-- if a viera finds in her own hands and the voice of the Wood insufficient joy. That is their way, but it is no longer hers. Fran had enjoyed the difference of his touch, and would enjoy it again, but it is hard to think of what she likes right now. Fran can smell Balthier's sweat drying on her skin, and the spent condoms in the bin beside the bed make her nose twitch. She knows she has been pleasured to her limits when hume scents shift from pleasing to sour.

"No blowjobs," she says, and goes to shower.

Balthier seems too relieved when she meets him for their departure, too eager for take-off, and his unease does not disperse with altitude. They are forced to make a landing in the Mosphoran Highwastes to repair the ship, and thence divert to Rabanastre. Their temporary solution is a jury-rigged crystal array: Fran learnt her mechanical skills on mooglecraft, Balthier Archadian, and their ship is hybrid. She does not think Nono will fault her solder. Balthier is still troubled.

"Did you like it at all? That night with me? I know you're--"

Her fingers under his collar make him silent. She kisses him. Balthier licks over her lips, her flat, closed teeth and Fran allows them to open, tastes his blood. She shows him her teeth, lest he ignore them further. Balthier's game pretending that she is hume is strangely appealing, if it is a game. Fran enjoys the soft skin of the humes, but she will not be the only one to watch her nails and teeth.

However, Balthier's casual shrug becomes innuendo, becomes his providing the ballast she stands against to shed her lower armour. This kiss is bloodless, and the chair solid behind her back. Even having swung her seat around to face the aisle, there is not much room to kneel. He is almost as tall as she, and either of their bunks would be longer if also narrow. Fran could grip the armrests when she needs to grip something, but she doesn't.

"Do you want me to stop?"

Her hand is on the back of his neck, where his hair is shorn shallow. She thinks she must have grazed him for him to stop, but he has already shaken that off, eyes alert, intent. His tongue licks his face. Balthier cannot know the temptation he is when he smells like her, but she can only imagine how he will be when he does.

Fran shakes her head, lips curling to a smile: no, she does not want to stop. Balthier grins, and continues.


End file.
